Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here's why | Hacker News Reader

Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here's why

theguardian.com

14 pointsprojektfu25 comments

I've been hammering on this issue for a while.

While I can't stand Trump personally and many of the things he stands for, the fact is that the American left has enclosed itself in a small number of alpha cities (look at the county election map) and effectively written off the rest of the country.

The objective fact is that it is impossible for American industry to the American worker to compete with industry in countries with no EPA, no OSHA, no workers comp, no unions, an artificially low currency, and artificially depressed wages. This isn't about being globally "competitive." It's just not a fair fight. If this is the reality of globalization then it means the working class in developed nations is permanently relegated to poverty and dependence. The latter goes radically against these peoples' values. They don't want welfare. They want jobs.

Both liberals and old-guard conservatives have completely ignored this issue. Too many people are getting rich off labor arbitrage for one, but the more immediate reason is that it doesn't affect them very much. They tend to be urban, wealthy, and disconnected from the places and the people this issue does affect. Case in point: Orange County California (where I am sitting) is historically a Republican enclave but this year it went for Hillary. It's also very wealthy, educated, and fairly urban (and becoming more so). Meanwhile historically Democratic rural areas went Trump. You do the math.

You can't write off your entire working class and rural population in a democracy. This is the result.

So what's the alternative? Protectionism? The rest of the world will be colonizing Pluto while we are self-sufficient with furniture. Look at all these chair building jobs! Each chair only costs $45,000 each.

No, the US will never, ever be competitive with India and China on industrial labor even if we went laissez faire. We have to go the other way. Drastically reform and expand education and compete with Europe, not China. In other words, in order to maintain our standard of living, we need to be inventing and designing and leave the manufacturing and production to Asia. (Until the AI/robot game changer.)

You're falling for the fallacy of the excluded middle.

The alliterative is fairness. If we're going to have an EPA and OSHA and the rest, then we have to tax imports from places that don't in proportion to the degree that they don't. Otherwise we have to drop these protections and be content with huffing pollution. After all, if we want to enjoy super-cheap manufactured goods then it's only fair that we also "enjoy" the externalities of this production. Either way it's fair to our working class. They get jobs.

I'm 100% in favor of free trade with other first world countries, where first world is defined as having these protections in place and having a living wage. This would be fair and would not lead to mass unemployment and economic destruction. Free trade with Canada, Europe, Australia, or Japan is not going to de-industrialize the entire USA. It might result in periodic disruption of certain industries (e.g. Japan with autos) but it would not result in the kind of total lasting decimation we are seeing.

Edit:

Cue someone coming in and citing some GDP stats and telling me everything is okay. Sorry, but you're wrong. The stats you are citing are not capturing the reality because they are including everything and everyone and everywhere. They are averages. Do a GDP stat and exclude San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, DC, Seattle, Portland, and college towns, and then we'll talk.

>If we're going to have an EPA and OSHA and the rest, then we have to tax imports from places that don't in proportion to the degree that they don't. Otherwise we have to drop these protections and be content with huffing pollution. After all, if we want to enjoy super-cheap manufactured goods then it's only fair that we also "enjoy" the externalities of this production. Either way it's fair to our working class. They get jobs.

This doesn't make sense. Taxing imports like that would make the things the middle class needs even more expensive. Now not only do that not have jobs, they can't afford anything. Removing protections would not make jobs come back, there is zero benefit to the companies responsible for that. On the chance any did, congrats now some people can get a job for $1.00/hr to complete with the workers in Vietnam. Now they have jobs and still can't afford anything. The jobs that left are not coming back no matter what we do. There's no point arguing about it or trying to save the sicking ship because it's already at the bottom of the ocean in two pieces. We need accept this as a society and try to solve it, not try and go back in time.

If people make more they can afford to spend more. What we need is an upward spiral in place of the downward (deflationary) spiral we have now.

> we have to tax imports from places that don't in proportion to the degree that they don't

This is an interesting idea. Are there any examples of countries doing this today?

Taxing for regulation differential would only make a small change. Labor and associated costs, health insurance, taxes, etc will still dominate.

The views fail to recognize that US is not the only world market. More than half of Apple's revenue for example, is oversees. Exports to elsewhere in the world will be even more difficult to bring back, and harm the worldwide competitiveness of our businesses. His plan to encourage repatriation of overseas revenue for taxation is smart though.

It also overlooks the fact that we have outsourced the labor to those countries, but the US still captures most of the value. i.e. For every iPhone sold, how much money goes to Apple and how much to their suppliers? This applies to most consumer industries. The investments and trade deals mostly allow US businesses to go in and extract value from other countries, and most of the profits still come back to the top. We really don't need to capture the last mile of value.

We also can not overlook the fact that the market is already voting against US production with their wallets. The market is free to pay a premium for US made products, but clearly prefers lower cost goods.

His statements are really just feel good for a group of workers that has not adapted to the new economy.

> We also can not overlook the fact that the market is already voting against US production with their wallets. The market is free to pay a premium for US made products, but clearly prefers lower cost goods.

So the rest of the country pays more food good and services in aggregate. Big deal. We do it with whatever tools are necessary, even tariffs.

EDIT:

> It would be much better to use the funds to re-educate this part of the population to work higher value jobs.

This opinion got Trump elected, and why drug use and death in rural America is epidemic. There are no higher value jobs coming to replace those lost to globalization. I know people with Masters degrees working at Starbucks and a Bail Bond shop.

Get off your high horse about market inefficiencies and realize "Let them eat cake" is what's taking us down the wrong path. Direct efforts must be made to help the most vulnerable members of our society, or they will burn the place down.

At the end of the day, it is about subsidizing an inefficient labor market. For the tariff to bring low value jobs back, it will have to be significant. Offshoring will still be more resource efficient, so you are better off paying back the tariff fees as welfare than bringing the jobs back. It would be much better to use the funds to re-educate this part of the population to work higher value jobs.

It is also disregarding the externalities of enacting a tariff. So we put something in place to bring electronic manufacturing back from China. They still control most of the raw materials, and can put their own tariff in place on export of those materials, further reducing our competitiveness. International politics are not so simple.

"We" don't capture most of the value though. Most of the value goes to a tiny percentage of Americans at the very top and everyone else loses their jobs. (Ironically many of the rich I've spoken with agree, while it's often the middle and upper middle class who argue this point.)

The simplest thing to do would not be to try to measure regulation differential legally speaking, but to measure and tax two more direct things: pollution and cost-of-living-adjusted wage differential.

Pollution could be taxed at the aggregate national level, e.g. via CO2/$GDP differential. This is a direct measure of the energy and resource efficiency of an economy, and it likely correlates with other kinds of pollution as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_...

Imports from countries below the USA on that list would be levied an offshore externality tax.

Wages would actually be harder to assess since that gets complicated, but honestly the pollution tax alone would make a massive difference in leveling the playing field. Higher efficiency in that area also probably correlates positively with wages in more developed countries, so CO2/$GDP might be all you need to start with for a differential fair trade tax.

Some countries that are high on that list (low pollution) are there because they are largely undeveloped and don't use much energy. They'd get free trade with us that would help them develop, but as they developed they'd be incentivized to do so in a more sustainable and cleaner way to avoid incurring tariffs. Developing by screwing the environment as China and others have done would be disincentivized.

I'd also love to see human rights included, but that's harder to measure objectively and probably also correlates with wages and pollution-efficiency. Countries that don't give a damn about their population's rights probably also don't care if they huff heavy metal laden coal ash, and vice versa.

"We" in the way used was intended to mean an American or Americans as opposed to the foreign entity. That it goes directly to the top is a separate issue, and suggestive of increased taxation, which Trump is generally against. Obviously a tariff is an option here, but it won't automatically bring jobs back.

Pollution and other externalities accounting is interesting, of course Trump has denied climate change so I would not expect much progress here.

Have to consider how trading is working with most of these countries as well. We're not selling entirely foreign products, especially when it comes to the ones offshoring American labor. The American companies go in to make use of the labor, and then "they", the American company is importing those products for sale on the American and global markets. "We" again meaning Americans in aggregate, are mostly reaping the benefits.

To have an effective trade strategy which builds in externalities you would have to have a widespread agreement between many countries. Otherwise, if say, an American company operating in China exporting to Africa had to pay those taxes, but a Polish company for example did not, we would be losing.

Ultimately, trying to bring those jobs back is trying to force a sub optimal solution. As it is, Americans are winning, in aggregate. It would be better to focus on redistributing our increased winnings.

The urban bubble is definitely a problem. There are so many people who simply do not understand life outside of that bubble and who dismiss anyone not part of it. Their solution for most problems rural people have is "move to a city", which rural people who enjoy their way of life but may still suffer from some challenges understandably find offensive and dismissive. I say this as a somewhat left-leaning person who lives in an extremely rural area, in my own little bubble of mostly liberal people.

The thing is, however, that there are a lot of ignorant, racist and proud people in rural areas. Some of them are people I know. It can be overwhelmingly offensive being around them in groups as they reveal just how racist they actually are, with a smile and a laugh, either not caring how others might think about them or not realizing why what they just said is offensive. Go to a gas station or small store or mechanic around where I live and you'll encounter people standing around and talking about how Trump's going to round up all the Mexicans and Muslims and kick them out finally, or celebrating the fact that "Trump's going to finally lock up Hillary". So, I'm torn. It's a stereotype of rural life that people are ignorant and racist, but it does in fact describe a lot of people. And post-Trump, they've been emboldened to speak their mind more openly.

I am not disagreeing with your comment. I too know many rural people who are very opinionated in matters of race. Yet I am very frustrated that the concept of racism is a one way street from white people to everyone else. I have spent plenty of time in urban environments across north America and many of their inhabitants exhibit the exact same behaviors.

If we are to improve we need to accept that we all have prejudices and need to be candid about them. It is okay not to like everyone, yet it isn't okay to persecute, demean, ostracize, or otherwise oppress them. This needs to be a mindset across the political, social, and racial spectrum.

> Their solution for most problems rural people have is "move to a city"

Which is doubly troubling, since nearly every major city is massively rejecting new residents, either through insane cost-of-living rises, or through literal persuasion from residents admonishing them "Don't move to Portland / Seattle / Denver / Austin / wherever".

You can't tell rural people "you must move to a city to survive" and then also tell them "screw you, we don't want you in our city"

>Their solution for most problems rural people have is "move to a city", which rural people who enjoy their way of life but may still suffer from some challenges understandably find offensive and dismissive.

At some point you need to accept reality and move on

And that's the attitude many rural voters are revolting against, right there. Tired of being told how to live their lives by arrogant city dwellers who don't understand or have any experience with rural life at all, yet see themselves as smarter and better and qualified to tell rural people what to do and assuming their way of life is suitable for everyone.

Those jobs are never coming back, though. For example, when China basically sucked up all the textile jobs in the 80s-90s from the South (states like North Carolina) they were able to do so with very cheap wages. Now? China is competing with Vietnam for those same jobs and their solution is to automate as much as possible. Oddly enough, some of those textile jobs remain and only because we've been ahead of the curve with automation. A textile plant today in the US has very few actual employees. And they're not paid much more than their predecessors since the cost of living in their area is very low. So, Trump either has to get a time machine or figure out a way to pay these people who have been permanently displaced in their jobs. Trump won't do what's needed which is the one thing that will ultimately set the country on the right course: abandon capitalism. And by the way, nor would Clinton do what I'm suggesting here since she knows who butters her bread.

I'm not sure that you can accurately say that those jobs are never coming back.

For instance, what happens if Congress passes a law that requires any goods imported into the US to be made under conditions equal to those here? For instance, you have to have environmentally friendly factories, OSHA-approved lighting and safety, etc. etc.

If that happened, many people would put some of the production here to speed time to market, reduce shipping costs, and eliminate currency fluctuations.

So never say never.

So you bring the machines back but that won't create the levels of unskilled employment from the past, manufacturers employee a fraction of the people they used to.

If the revenue is local, you can tax it and provide a social safety net. Works using tariffs as well, but better to have the industry on your own soil.

But the way the Republicans since the Tea Party take over in 2010 there's no push to raise taxes higher at the local level. In fact, the opposite is the case where many of them want to remove as many taxes locally as possible. This conflict of interest with the false assertion of their conservative localism is the heart of the issue I have with them (I would consider myself a liberal localist). If there ideology was consistent the absence of federal taxes but extensive local taxes would offset their proposals. This would allow them to pay for a social safety net that wouldn't falter. But right now they're refusing to do that. Maybe after they're challenged in the 2018 mid-terms maybe they'll go that direction but I seriously doubt it'll happen that way. I expect more corporate subsidies via tax exemptions/shelters/etc at the cost of general welfare of the states.

America is the 11th richest nation in the world (per-capita), if they wanted to find the money they could do it right now.

I'm not saying America doesn't have a balance of trade problem, I just think people put too much faith in a resolution to that. This https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa5_tudyAF8 is what modern manufacturing looks like, note there aren't many people working there.

> Trump won't do what's needed which is the one thing that will ultimately set the country on the right course: abandon capitalism.

If we abandon capitalism, what alternative do you believe we should adopt instead?

Haven't we had enough of this topic, especially here?

I still see people blaming Trump voters instead of the Democrats, so no?

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